The present invention relates to a semiconductor laser diode, and more particularly, it relates to a semiconductor laser diode whose longitudinal mode is multi-longitudinal mode including self sustained pulsation.
Recently, a semiconductor laser diode is frequently used as an optical pickup light source for use in an optical recording device or reading device for a recording medium such as an optical disk or a magneto-optical recording disk. Such semiconductor laser diodes are widely applied to a recorder, a PC, a vehicle and the like, and the market of optical disks is being increasing. In particular, there is a large demand for on-vehicle application typified by a car navigation system, and a demand for optical pickup device capable of reproducing all disks including CDs and DVDs is increasing.
What an on-vehicle optical pickup device is strongly required are (1) compactness, (2) wide operation temperature guarantee for operating in a wide temperature range from a low temperature to a high temperature and (3) suppression of signal degradation (noise reduction).
First, for (1) compactness of an optical pickup device, it is effective to simplify the device by reducing optical components, and in one method for this purpose, a red semiconductor laser of a 650 nm band for a DVD and an infrared semiconductor laser of a 780 nm band for a CD are integrally provided on one semiconductor substrate as a monolithic semiconductor laser. Thus, the semiconductor laser itself can be integrated as one component as well as optical components such as a collimator lens and a beam splitter can be shared by the red semiconductor laser and the infrared semiconductor laser, and hence, this method is useful for the compactness.
Also, for (2) wide operation temperature guarantee, it is necessary to improve the temperature characteristic of the semiconductor laser diode itself. As one method for this purpose, technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-174385 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1) is known. Patent Document 1 describes that when a taper stripe structure in which the width of a ridge is changed along an optical path direction is employed, a lower current density can be attained than in a general straight stripe structure and the temperature characteristic can be improved by suppressing heat generation of the diode through reduction of differential resistance owing to a large ridge width.
Next, with respect to (3) suppression of signal degradation (noise reduction), a factor to cause noise will be first examined.
There is little light returning from an optical disk, an optical recording medium or an optical system to a semiconductor laser diode. Therefore, in the case where the laser beam has high coherence, light obtained within a resonator and the returned light affect each other, resulting in causing noise in an output of the semiconductor laser diode.
As a countermeasure for such noise derived from the returned light, a method in which the semiconductor laser diode is subjected to fast modulation, a method in which multi-longitudinal mode is employed for the oscillation mode of the semiconductor laser diode, a method in which the semiconductor laser diode itself is placed in a pulse oscillation state or the like is employed.
In the method in which the semiconductor laser diode is subjected to the fast modulation, however, a high-frequency superposed module is used and hence the number of components is increased. Therefore, this method is disadvantageous in the compactness and the cost of the optical pickup. Furthermore, equipment using a high frequency (such as an ETC (electronic toll collection system)) apart from the high-frequency superposed module for the fast modulation of the semiconductor laser diode is frequently mounted on a recent vehicle. Therefore, resonance may be caused between the frequencies of these equipment so as to cause a problem of malfunction of the equipment. Accordingly, the method in which the semiconductor laser diode is subjected to the fast modulation cannot be the best method.
On the other hand, as the method in which the multi-longitudinal mode is employed for the oscillation mode, a gain guide structure used for the optical waveguide mechanism is well known. Since the threshold current is increased when the gain guide structure is used, however, the operation power is increased and this method is disadvantageous for the temperature characteristic.
Also, as the method in which the semiconductor laser diode is pulse oscillated, the spread of a current is made narrower than the spread of light so as to form a saturable absorber in an active layer. As one means for forming a saturable absorber, technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 3183692 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 2) is known. In the technique disclosed in Patent Document 2, the resistance of a semiconductor layer disposed between a current blocking layer and an active layer is set to be higher than that of the active layer. Thus, a current can be allowed to reach the active layer while suppressing the spread of the current to be equivalent to the width of a ridge stripe, and light is not supplied in a portion not having the stripe width because no current passes this portion, and hence, the laser beam is absorbed in this portion so as to form a saturable absorber. As a result, self sustained pulsation can be performed.
In such a semiconductor laser diode, the thickness of the semiconductor layer disposed between the current blocking layer and the active layer is approximately 0.45 μm through 0.65 μm when it is an infrared laser diode and is approximately 0.25 μm through 0.4 μm when it is a red laser diode.